


Damsel and Dame

by Caesia390



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:11:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22840732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caesia390/pseuds/Caesia390
Summary: The two eldest Black girls were so close as children. Incest, underage sex, dubious consent in the first chapter (originally a standalone on pornish_pixies). Followed by drug-fueled orgies and the birth of Nymphadora. Because you know... the seventies.And then the Dementors came.
Relationships: Narcissa Black Malfoy & Andromeda Black Tonks
Kudos: 5





	1. Show Me

...

‘Let me show you something, Cissa.’

Some squalling thing in a bassinet, a house-elf standing nervously nearby. The four-year-old thought it might be a banshee. Andromeda lifted aside the gauzy veil so Narcissa, standing on tip-toes, could see the newest Black. A red, wrinkled, contorted thing, with black down like a shadow crowning its head.

‘We have another sister,’ Andromeda confided, smiling. Narcissa felt vaguely hurt. She and Andromeda were sisters, no one else. But even though Andromeda gazed lovingly at what Narcissa thought resembled a bizarrely enchanted potato, Narcissa couldn’t really imagine such a nuisance holding her sister’s attention for long.

‘Come on, Andy, let’s go’ she lisped, and met no resistance as she drew her sister back into the garden. They resumed their game of fairies, flitting about the tall grass with their bleached skirts billowing behind them like butterfly wings. Andromeda caught Narcissa into a hug and tumbled them both to the ground, laughing in the ripe summer air.

…

‘Let me show you something, Cissa.’

Narcissa looked up from her book to see a slender wooden stick in her sister’s outstretched hands. It was a wand like the grown-ups had. Narcissa itched to hold it, to try it out, but Father said girls didn’t need wands except for school, and Narcissa was only nine. She bit her small, pink lip and looked up at Andromeda, who was smiling. She didn’t ask.

‘Here. Try it.’

Narcissa took the smooth wooden handle, warm from her sister’s grip. The wood was the same honey brown as Andromeda’s eyes. Narcissa murmured, ‘[i]Florifer[/i],’ moving the instrument in a figure-eight. The pillow in front of her sprouted roses.

‘I knew you’d be good at it!’ Andromeda squealed, sitting down beside her on the window seat. ‘I don’t know any spells yet.’ She plucked one of the heavy blooms and tried to put it in Narcissa’s hair, but the petals fell apart and littered the child’s pale curls and lacy robes. ‘Oh well,’ the older girl sighed.

They sat in silence for a while, Andromeda gazing out the window, idly playing with Narcissa’s hair and dress, and Narcissa pretending to concentrate on her book, an illustrated guide to pixies. She didn’t cry or say, ‘Don’t go,’ though she knew Andromeda would be leaving for Hogwarts tomorrow.

That night, Andromeda hugged her close and whispered, ‘I’ll miss you,’ her slim legs tangling with Narcissa’s amidst the fabric of their nightgowns, the soft sheets of the bed they shared. Narcissa bit her lip and dug her nails into her sister’s arm and didn’t say a word. In the morning, when they woke in the same knot of girlish limbs and tangled hair, Andromeda murmured, ‘Look after Bellatrix,’ who was snoring in her own small bed.

Narcissa shook her head, but she let go.

…

‘Let me show you something, Cissa.’

Narcissa turned from her mirror only to have Andromeda nearly press her back into it with kissing and consequently ruin the cosmetic charms she’d been practicing.

‘What was that for?’ She wondered aloud, more bewildered than upset. Her lips felt chafed.

Andromeda seemed to be sparkling all over: her eyes, her smile, even her hair that she’d recently cut to shoulder-length, much to their mother’s dismay. ‘Harvey Ellison kissed me today,’ she said in response, plopping down on Narcissa’s bed. ‘I wanted to show you.’

‘But he’s in Hufflepuff!’

‘I know.’

‘But… why?’ Boys were marriage prospects, not playthings, and one certainly didn’t kiss them.

‘Because I could. Because we don’t just have to do what Mother and Father tell us. There’s more to life than that.’

Andromeda had recently turned fourteen, and ever since then she’d been starting to collect very strange ideas… Narcissa put on her most dubious and supercilious expression. She’d been practicing it for when Rudolphus Lestrange or Lucius Malfoy next hung about her, pestering her. Andromeda stared for a moment and then laughed. Narcissa smiled, still confused.

‘But why kiss Harvey Ellison? What’s the point?’

‘Well, it’s supposed to feel good.’

Narcissa had heard such notions from other girls, but they were all foolish and from poor or polluted families; they could afford frivolities, not like a Black. But to hear her own sister… ‘How?’

Andromeda’s smile fell a bit. ‘I don’t think Harvey was very good at it. But come here.’

Narcissa obediently climbed onto the bed, grateful yet again that she was in Slytherin. Apparently other Houses actually had to share rooms.

‘You start with your lips,’ Andromeda was saying, positioning Narcissa’s shoulders so that they comfortably faced each other. Then she leaned in, and there was the chapped dryness again, rubbing over Narcissa’s mouth.

Narcissa pulled away enough to murmur, ‘Lick your lips.’

‘Ok,’ Andromeda breathed. Damp lips, now, making little nibbling movements, and Narcissa found herself copying them on her sister’s mouth. It was sort of… different. She felt herself flushing a bit, like when Father let her sip wine at important dinners. A pleasant sort of tingle…

‘Open your mouth more.’

The second Narcissa did, Andromeda licked her.

Narcissa sprung back and clapped a hand over her giggles. Andromeda was glinting at her mischievously. ‘Did it tickle?’ Narcissa nodded. ‘Come on, let’s try again.’

Narcissa was still giggling for the next two tries, which got Andromeda herself chuckling, but finally they figured out how to press and twine their tongues around each other, nibbling and sucking on each other’s lips, even sucking on each other’s tongues. It was quite pleasant. After a few moments, they pulled apart, breathless, and Narcissa was smiling, one hand on Andromeda’s shoulder to hold herself steady. ‘I’m glad you showed me.’

Andromeda glanced down, and Narcissa noticed that she’d pressed her other hand to the space between her legs. ‘Does it tingle there?’ Andromeda asked.

Narcissa nodded, though she’d only just realized it.

‘Me, too.’ Andromeda breathed for a space. ‘Shall we try something else?’

Narcissa was more than willing to continue. ‘What else?’

‘You rub yours and I rub mine, and we press close together.’

They were better at kissing this time. Narcissa pushed one hand into the thick hair on Andromeda’s scalp and used the other to rub herself through her robes, her knuckles running against Andromeda’s, who was doing the same thing. She could feel the softness of Andromeda’s breasts pressing into her smaller ones. Her nipples tightened, her crotch itched, and her mouth felt like it was burning. ‘Closer,’ she groaned. Andromeda wrapped an arm around the small of her back and tugged her forward sharply, her mouth sloppily, hungrily devouring Narcissa’s, her fingers mingling with Narcissa’s to press and rub against both of them.

‘We should be naked,’ Andromeda moaned.

‘All right.’ Narcissa felt weak, trembling, as she undid her robe and clambered out of her damp underwear. She watched Andromeda undressing and saw that she had much thicker pubic hair, her breasts were heavier, her nipples darker. ‘You’re beautiful.’

Andromeda smiled. ‘So are you.’ She pulled back the bedspread and slipped in. Narcissa followed. It felt like home again, tangled in her sister’s arms under the covers. She manoeuvred herself so she was leaning over Andromeda, then kissed and kissed and kissed, feeling out Andromeda’s teeth with her tongue while her sister sucked on her bottom lip, undulating her skinny, bony body against Andromeda’s softness while Andromeda pressed a hand to her back, her bottom, her thigh, slipping a finger into the swollen wetness there.

Narcissa groaned, and Andromeda wrapped a leg around her so that their crotches rubbed together. ‘Hands. More,’ she gasped, and Narcissa wriggled a hand between their bodies to comply.

Then Andromeda rolled them over and it was her hand between Narcissa’s legs, her tongue in Narcissa’s mouth, her fist in Narcissa’s hair, and all Narcissa could do was gyrate and whimper and moan, then Andromeda shifted and there was a breast hanging in front of her face and Andromeda’s choked commands to ‘Bite me. Suck me.’ Narcissa latched onto a nipple and sucked and licked, reached for Andromeda with her hand and trailed her fingers up the smooth thigh until she found the hot, wet, hairy mound and rubbed and clenched like mad to echo Andromeda’s movements against her own crotch. Andromeda stuck two fingers inside and it was almost painful and Narcissa shuddered and lost her hold on Andromeda’s breast, crying out softly.

Andromeda collapsed next to her, breathing heavily, petting Narcissa’s sweat-damp hair.

‘There,’ she said after a bit. ‘I knew it could be fun.’

‘You would do that with a boy?’ Narcissa asked, and she would have giggled again if she weren’t so spent. She couldn’t imagine trusting any of the boys she knew enough to allow them to look at her for very long, let alone touch her.

Andromeda laughed. ‘Maybe someday.’

…

‘Let me show you something, Cissa.’

They were taking a carriage to visit their cousins in London. Narcissa would have preferred a train, but Andromeda insisted on a buggy, said she wanted to experience the summer. Pollen, heat, and humidity, all the things Narcissa could live without, but Andromeda had seemed so eager, and so she’d acquiesced.

Bellatrix had indulged in a tantrum, and her punishment was to stay with Mother until she calmed down. Narcissa secretly hoped she would miss the whole vacation. One brat was enough at any given time, and with their cousins...

‘Let me show you something, Cissa.’ Narcissa dragged her attention from the slowly moving, gently rocking scenery to stare at Andromeda and her secret smile. The secret smile that had stayed perched on the corner of her mouth all year and threatened to burst onto her whole face at her graduation… The smile Narcissa had been watching closely, dreadfully, and now it was finally time for it to bloom.

‘Yes. What is it?’

Andromeda looked slightly hurt at her lack of enthusiasm, but nonetheless pulled on a chain that lay around her neck and disappeared into her robes until a thin, gold ring sprang free. ‘It’s my engagement ring.’

Narcissa stared at the slim little bit of metal that looked like it would disappear in a strong light. ‘…That’s not from Edward Bones.’

‘No. It’s from… Well, I’m not telling you who it’s from. I want to give us a little time, before Mother and Father find out, and it’ll make it more difficult for you… I’m breaking free, Narcissa!’

There. That smile. It was like a rainstorm. Andromeda always loved the rain; Narcissa hated it.

‘Congratulations.’ She turned back toward the window and put on her alabaster face.

A hand, hot and slightly sweaty, gripping her own pale, cold one. ‘Narcissa, come on! You must feel trapped, like I do. Maybe you’re too young…’ Narcissa glared at a passing tree. The grip on her hand squeezed harder. ‘You’ll realize, someday, that you can’t just do the things they want you to do, be what they want you to be… After graduation…’

‘After graduation, I’m going to marry Lucius Malfoy.’

Andromeda shook her head. ‘No, Narcissa. There are other ways…’

‘He’s perfect for me. I’m perfect for him. We’re going to be the most powerful, beautiful, wealthy couple there is.’

‘Narcissa!’ Andromeda sat back a bit, and out of the corner of her eye, Narcissa could see she was frowning, disappointed. ‘Don’t be like this. I thought you, if anyone, would understand that there’s more…’

‘Enough, Andromeda!’ Narcissa yanked her hand out of her sister’s slackened hold and continued to speak to passing foliage and sheep. ‘Do what you have to do. Run away. Marry that mudblood who’s been panting after you. Just don’t involve me in it.’ She ignored the voiceless protests pounding and stabbing against her heart. ‘Don’t involve me in anything ever again.’

‘Narcissa…’ A dismayed whisper.

‘Didn’t you think of it, Andromeda?’ She turned to watch all the happiness crumble in her sister’s eyes. ‘I won’t be able to see you or speak to you after you go. You’ll be disowned. They’ll burn you off the tapestry. It would shame me and my future family to speak to you after this.’

She was waiting for the tears, waiting for Andromeda to collapse into sorrow and realize that, yes, as usual, she hadn’t thought things through; she hadn’t accounted for reality when fashioning her dreams. Narcissa didn’t expect the fierce grimace, that catlike yowl as Andromeda shrieked and sprang at her from the opposite seat. She gripped Andromeda’s wrists and fell backward, felt the scratches on her forehead and chin where Andromeda could reach her, felt the soft lips and delicate teeth press into her mouth, Andromeda muttering, ‘Damn you,’ while her tears splashed onto Narcissa’s cheeks. ‘I’ll miss you,’ kissing her gently, as Narcissa relaxed her hold and Andromeda could collapse onto her, press her into the seat with the awkward movements of the carriage and attempt to cradle her in her arms. ‘I’ll miss you. Bitch. Reptile. Sister.’

Narcissa couldn’t catch her breath to whimper, ‘I’ll miss you, too.’

They threatened to upset the balance of the vehicle removing their clothes, so much so that the thestral whinnied a sharp note in protest. Finally Narcissa was sitting in the centre of her seat amidst a heap of discarded skirts, legs spread, while Andromeda knelt on the floor of the carriage and kissed her where the springy, wiry curls had grown lush, where she was moist and waiting. She held Narcissa’s thighs open, digging into the skin with her nails, and sucked, licked, and nibbled at Narcissa’s clit until the younger girl felt herself begin to shake.

‘Come with me,’ Andromeda murmured into the swollen lips of her sister’s vagina.

Narcissa tightened her grip on her wavy, red-brown hair. ‘No.’

Andromeda applied teeth, then, and slipped her tongue as far as she could inside. She added fingers, one, two, churning and pressing until she heard Narcissa gasp. ‘Promise you’ll visit me.’

‘I can’t.’

She moved to lathe her sister’s belly with her tongue and slipped a third finger in, a fourth, Narcissa crying out, and then her entire fist. Narcissa screamed.

‘I’ll miss you,’ she gasped, tears rolling down her flushed cheeks.

‘I know,’ Andromeda said, fucking her.

Later they lay twined together on the opposite seat, Narcissa’s head on her sister’s breast, absently fondling a dark nipple. Andromeda was going to meet her boyfriend in London, before the sisters reached Grimmauld Place. Their goodbyes were the scent around them, the sweat evaporating into the air that leaked out the carriage window.

‘Thank you for showing me,’ Narcissa whispered.

...


	2. Andromeda Retrograde

***

Andromeda has always been impulsive. As usual, she isn’t certain that she’s going to go through with it until it’s done and she’s away.

***

The first time, she was high on freedom for months. She was voracious for Ted. They did it in every room of his parents’ house, any time they thought they wouldn’t get caught. She even brought his sister Lydia into their games. And then it was the Muggles – Lydia’s friends – muggle parties, muggle lovers, muggle potions.

She had been like a goddess to them, radiant and transcendent. They were vulnerable to slightest whiff of seductive magic. It never even bothered them that she could never remember their ridiculous muggle names. Of course in those days everyone was already half-confunded on muggle drugs.

It was a novelty, of course, but it wore off quickly. Andromeda had escaped her family to be more fully herself – not to hide behind obfuscating, obliviating charms, not to feel overwhelmed and bewildered by the confusion of muggle devices and muggle jargon, the noise they always craved.

So she and Ted created their own home out in the countryside, just one muggle village nearby. It was romantic at first, nesting, housekeeping. No house elves. No interlopers between Ted and herself. And then Nymphadora was born.

***

And then it was Ted and herself and a screaming baby with no help, no family, no visitors except Ted’s insipid siblings and his insipid friends. Andromeda remembered dinner parties with conversation so monotonous and predictable... she could have hexed someone. She would spend hours getting everything ready - the house, the grounds, her appearance, the menu - only to ache with boredom and isolation once the guests arrived. Were they too wary of her to let show any dark secrets or were they all really so dull?

That must have been about the time she rediscovered the hippogriff figurine. Buried at the bottom of one of her trunks, Andromeda glimpsed its faint shimmer and almost hesitated to touch it. It had been a gift from her parents, the day Bellatrix was born.

Two gifts, actually, two figurines, identical, consolation perhaps for the peace that had been lost: one gift to Cissa and one to herself.

Days, nights Andromeda was tempted, so tempted.

A touch, a word.

Andromeda knew an assortment of spells she could have used. To signal. To sound. To connect.

She set the hippogriff on her dressing table. Hundreds of times her wand was in her hand and the right words on the tip of her lips.

Narcissa.

Sister.

Wondering if at the same time, in her stone mansion, if Cissa had unearthed her own figurine and was itching to reach out with her own spell. Watching and waiting for her figure to hum and glow.

But Andromeda would never be the first to give in.

And neither would Narcissa.

***

Instead she took to practicing her curses on the encroaching village. The muggles had started to build something – something horrid and noisome and foul-smelling, the ugliness of it even visible from within their wards – a factory. A series of industrial accidents befell it, and then the factory was no more.

Ted had long lost his novelty by then, but they still had Nymphadora. Their daughter was a joy, a wonder. It was as if Andromeda had conjured her out of every dream she had ever wished for herself. The girl had a wild streak, to be sure, willful and energetic like her mother, although thankfully she was never the hellchild Bella had been. And her powers… Andromeda had never imagined such powers. Of course it might have had something to do with all the muggle acid she took during her pregnancy.

As Nymphadora grew Andromeda saw to it that she was raised with every asset Andy had ever wanted for herself. She was as strict as her parents had been at times, cobbling together what she could of the best parts of her own upbringing. But without the same rigid, outdated rules, without the same absurdities. Without the shouting and chaos and then icy, brittle silence.

Ted might bore her, but he was a loving, consistent, understanding father. And spouse, for that matter.

Andromeda still read the newspapers. She wouldn’t hide, wouldn’t flinch. That was how she knew of Narcissa’s marriage, her status, her house. Even gossip about Bella’s loyalties. She watched them in their black and white, unfocused photographs, watched them enslave themselves to the Dark Lord. Pathetic, desperate fools.

No matter how powerful they grew, Andromeda could never lose her contempt. It was all so… undignified. Fighting the rising tide, the changing times. As if they could turn back the ages.

Andromeda read the papers, start to finish, and then she meticulously unfolded them and spread them on the floor of her stable.

Just as well she and Ted kept well out of it, left to themselves in their country retreat.

Killings and curses on the horizon like distant thunder... But they were all but forgotten. They were safe.

***

It was after the first war that she started breeding Thestrals for the Ministry.

She remembered taking Nymphadora with her into the village. She had polyjuiced herself into a muggle nurse, and Dora was under an invisibility spell. They went to attend on an old man on his deathbed. The girl had needed to see, to understand, death.

Andromeda might no longer be a Black, but she wouldn’t shield the girl from anything.

Not from the heart of things, anyway.

And then after what had seemed just a short time of home tutelage, Nymphadora was at school. Only so far as Scotland, although Andromeda had seriously considered Durmstrang. Ted was the one to put his foot down. He wouldn’t send his daughter to board in a foreign land.

***

It was through the papers as well that Andromeda first learned of Draco. A family portrait next to some aristocratic announcement, the boy looking like a shard of Narcissa that had broken off, but with a faint trace of a scowl, some of the brutality he must have inherited from his father. Narcissa looking like she had indeed lost a piece of herself.

And the hippogriff still sitting silent and cold on Andromeda’s dressing table.

Narcissa had born a child. Flesh of her flesh. And she had never reached out to her older sister.

Andromeda was itching for a change. With Dora safely away at school she started traveling. She even met some of her old school friends haunting the various wizarding capitols abroad – the ones who hadn’t been killed or imprisoned during the war, the ones who ventured to acknowledge her. She took a lover or three. She improved her thestral stock.

Andromeda was the one who rode them, trained them, but Ted had turned out to be surprisingly adept at caring for them. Something so gentle and reassuring in his nature.

They had found a new rhythm by then.

Andromeda still traveled but she had made one good friend closer to home, a botanist witch named Hortensis with a wicked home brew. Not quite as wild as the potions Andy had experimented with in her youth but still imparting some interesting effects on the mind.

***

It never once occurred to her to try to see Bellatrix, during all those years. Her wild, lost baby sister. Not when she floundered as a teenager, not when she threw herself at the Dark Lord, not when she was captured, condemned.

Even Sirius, her favorite cousin. It had surprised Andromeda to see on which side he had landed in the end, and she felt a painful twinge at his punishment, but then those were mad years. Lies and spies and killing green. Families torn apart, never mind her own defection.

Everyone had gone mad one way or another.

She knew, somehow, although they stayed well out of politics... When Nymphadora applied to become an Auror, she knew. It settled on her cold and heavy, the certainty that war must come. Must come again. But Andromeda never would have stopped her daughter. In a way perhaps this is what she had been preparing her for her whole life.

To go out into the world. To act. To be. Unconstrained.

***

It happened quickly, sparks and licks of conflict and then the conflagration. In the hollow aftermath Andromeda once more opened the paper and saw that Narcissa Malfoy had been condemned a Death Eater and was sentenced to life in Azkaban.

She read the whole paper, as usual, unfolded every article, and placed it on the floor of her stable to be soiled by her thestrals.

Narcissa. In Azkaban.

In the evening Andromeda stared at her porcelain hippogriff.

She thought of all the spells she had held in her hand, in her mouth, all those years, yearning to conjure a connection.

Too late.

***

Three months later, she told Ted she would be off traveling. She told him that she would return.

She locked her personal suite with an assortment of tricks and traps and puzzles, the sort she used to force Nymphadora to solve, even when the girl whinged and pouted and stamped her foot.

She stopped by to see Hortensis and they spent the whole night polishing off a bottle of her latest brew, sitting on a hillside under an ocean of stars.

Without quite thinking about it Andromeda approached her stable and shushed her strongest, most reliable beast, pulling him by his reign out into the dawn.

She wasn’t certain she was going to go through with it, but then they were riding, and then they were flying, and then they were hours out over the sea, urged on by Andromeda’s wakefulness and her warming charms and by the songs she sang out of key.

French love songs, muggle coven chants, even some old, tragic lullaby her mother had crooned.

***


	3. Virgo Declines

###

It isn’t difficult to enter Azkaban.

It does take her a while to find the right cell. She's growing dizzy herself and somehow wretched but she realizes that she's searching for a negative, a lack. Finally she find her. Narcissa sits quiet and composed, a white shadow in the corner, unlike most of the other inmates who rage and writhe and cry aloud.

Even after the years that have passed, even though the shadows of Narcissa’s face shift and fade after countless cosmetic charms, Andromeda still has no trouble recognizing her sister.

She looks like a ghost of herself. Glimpses under the shadows – tired and worn. Her bones are Andromeda’s bones, their mother’s bones.

Narcissa sits quietly. Andromeda lowers herself down onto the cold stone beside her.

They do not speak.

After a while – hours? – Andromeda takes Narcissa’s hand.

Andromeda feels the dread and the cold and memories swirling out of her, around her. Echoes of her father shouting… her mother closing up like an impenetrable box… and Bella… tiny, so tiny, smiling… Before the shouting began again.

“Those who loved him,” Narcissa says. “Those who... yearned... for what he offered... were the lonely ones… the hungry ones. Bellatrix… Evan… Severus…”

She does not move when she speaks. She does not lift her gaze.

“I… was never lonely. After you left… I was alone.”

Narcissa scarcely moves when she is awake. She hardly speaks. She barely breathes. Andromeda only knows when she has fallen asleep because she her torso shifts, and moans surge out of her throat like vomit.

She moans names. Bellatrix. Lucius. Severus. Draco.

Draco. Draco. Draco.

She hiccups faint sobs in her sleep.

When she wakes, Narcissa’s brows only draw tighter and tighter while she looks ahead of her at the emptiness of her cell.

Andromeda sits beside her, Narcissa's cool palm resting in her hand.

Narcissa never looks at her.

Andromeda knows she can escape any time.

Her thestral is still waiting for her.

Whenever she decides to leave.

Whenever she decides  
To let go  
Raise herself up  
And leave.

Shadows press upon her like dreaming.

Like drowning in a deep, cold sleep.

She sits beside Narcissa and holds her sister's hand.

***


End file.
